The American Hospital Association has submitted comments to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission regarding a draft recommendation that would increase payment rates for the acute-care hospital inpatient and outpatient prospective payment systems by 3.2 percent.
According to the AHA, significant positive updates for both the hospital inpatient and outpatient prospective payment system are necessary in fiscal year 2016 considering the average hospital will have an overall Medicare margin of -9.0 percent in FY 2015.
The AHA also suggested MedPAC withdraw its draft site-neutral payment recommendations for hospital outpatient departments and for long-term care hospitals, given several recent reforms to the outpatient and long-term care hospital prospective payment systems.
Additionally, the association outlined guiding principles for evaluating proposed short-stay payment policies and recommended comprehensive reform of the Recovery Audit Contractor program and repeal of the 0.2 percent reduction to the inpatient standardized amount.
MedPAC is expected to vote on the 2016 payment recommendations in the next few days.
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